-
Chapter 16: Night Bivouac
- TCU Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Sixteen Night Bivouac / don't Wdnt to sit dnd cry! 1 don't wdnt to wonder why! / just want to fight and die! -marching song Our activities intensified in the tenth week, and we moved back away from Infantry Hall. The major activity was a night bivouac out in the pine forests that made up a large parr ofFoH Benning. We were to spend three nights in the bush. T he second night was a low-crawl exercise beneath live machine-gun fire, and the other nights were night patrol exercises. The TAC officers hyped the machine-gun-range crawl, telling us that the tracers would be set eighteen inches off the ground. "If you hike your butt up in the air the way you do in the low-crawl pit, they'll shoot that sucker off. Have you ever seen an officer candidate without an ass walkin' around here~ Well, ifyou did, he probably lost it in lhe machine-gun pit. We ain't shittin' you guys; this is just like (he real thing, so don't fuck it up." Garrett had been designated the platoon leader for the week, and it was a hell of a lot harder trying to maintain any kind of order and discipline on field exercises than it was marching in and out oflnfmtry Hall. I wondered if Rancek had thought this might be [he time to test Garrett. He'd generally left us alone in the past few weeks, or at least he hadn't shown us any special antagonism. In fact, he seemed to have decided that I wasn't worth his special energies. He'd even displayed some kind of confidence in me, I thought, by assigning me to be the academic officer of the platoon. It required some of my free time, but it also got me Out of some shit details. When it came time to get people to do some nasty extra work, I could beg off as academic officer. They trucked us out into the field on Tuesday afternoon. From there we were to march the six miles to the machine-gun range. AI; we were boarding the trucks, Marrin, the TAC officer from third platoon, told us how to treat the other officer-candidate companies that we would pass in the trucks. "Men, one of the main dements in OCS is espirit de corps. You must believe in your outfit, and you must let everybody else know that you believe fully that your company is the best around. So when you pass the other OCS companies in trucks, I want you to yell Out what you think about them. Give them the proper signal." With that, Manin yelled Out at imaginary trucks, ~ PUSSIES, PUSSIES!" And he raised his middle finger in recognizable salute. And so, as this group of 167 would-be officers and gentlemen trucked by other companies ofwould-be officers, we gave them Bronx cheers and the finger. At the bleachers near the bivouac area we lined up in platoon formations and checked our gear. The plan was for each platoon to fan out and march to designated areas and set up camp, just as if we were in the boonies ofViernam. A platoon of"aggressors" made up ofa ragtag element from Casual Company and others awaiting bad conduct discharges were supposed to be in the area the second night, bur the first night we were just to get to the right spot and dig in before we starred playing the game. Garrett knew of Shrode's previous experience, so he put him in charge of the map and compass, and we headed Out to our designated spot-a hike of six clicks through what appeared on the map ro be pretty difficult terrain. But Shrode knew what he was doing and rather than trying to go straight to the spot and up and down through the thick pines of the valleys , he followed the contours of the land and took us along a ridge linc and around a stream rather than through it. We got there in less than four hours, so it was still early afternoon when we began to set up camp. We set up in a circle and dug in around the perimeter. For the second and third nights we were [Q put out scouts and set up guards beyond the perimeter , but for the first night we just gOt our stuff together. It was a typical 118 Flirt Bnming...